facebook

You’ve probably heard it time and time again: You need to get on Facebook.
So, what’s one of the spots online that people spend the most time?
Correct: FACEBOOK
In fact, Facebook users spend an average of 20+ minutes per day on the popular social network.

That’s quite a bit of time considering this happens on a daily basis. Not to mention, many of us can think of our personal experiences of spending way too much time clicking on links and liking posts on Facebook throughout the workday.

Therefore, it’s time to take advantage of Facebook as a selling platform – well not a fully fledged one like Shopify or your OWN E-Commerce Website but certainly with a lot of Traffic.

If you aren’t already aware, you have the ability to create a Facebook shop page and directly sell items to your followers.You can see my own Shop (as example) here
Before I start it goes without saying
You need a to have a Facebook BUSINESS PAGE (not just a Profile)!
You need to be logged in.

Step 1: Go to Your Facebook Page and Add a New Section

The first step is to navigate to your Facebook Business page. Obviously, you need to be logged into the business page and have admin privileges, but once you go to your timeline you can see a button called Add a Shop Section. It’s located just below the cover photo, to the right.

A popup reveals itself, so you should click Add Shop Section once again.If you do not see SHOP then look for ADD NEW TAB and choose SHOP

Agree to the merchant terms and policies and click Continue.

Step 2: Setup Your Shop Details

Another popup comes up asking about some business details. Start by punching in your business email address. I would recommend checking the box that uses the email for custom service inquiries. This way, any questions that people have are sent to that account.

Towards the bottom of the popup, you should punch in your business address, including the street name, city, state and zip code.

Step 3: Configure Your Payments

You have two options for accepting payment through your Facebook store. The first is processing the payments through the Facebook page. The other involves redirecting customers to another website, like your online shop or website.

Since the most convenient for your customers is to have them check out on Facebook, that’s what we recommend.

Once you select that you’d like to have a checkout on Facebook, proceed by filling in your business information. US users can set up an account through Stripe or PayPal. If you’re located outside of the US, you can arrange an alternative payment method with your customers, such as a bank transfer or cash upon delivery.

Anyway, right above the area that asks for your business address, it talks about setting up your payment system. Click on the link that says to connect to an existing Stripe account. If you don’t currently have a Stripe account, Stripe will send you an email to set one up. That’s after you configure your entire store.

Logging into a current Stripe account is pretty simple. Facebook walks you through the steps to connect the two platforms together.

Note: The PayPal option is still being rolled out, so some business page users won’t see it yet.

Step 4: Finish Your Shop Setup

Once your Stripe account is completely connected, it should redirect you back to the primary Facebook business page. Click on the Finish Setup button to complete filling in the rest of your business information.

This is a fairly simple process, and it all depends on the type of business you run. Once you walk through the final steps the Facebook page becomes live for you to start selling. This doesn’t mean you have anything to sell just yet, but your shop page is configured and your payment platform is ready to start accepting purchases.

Step 5: Add a Product to Your Facebook Shop

Now that you’re ready to start selling, let’s talk about how to add a few products that people can look at and consider buying.

You should see a Shop tab on your Facebook business page. Click on this tab to reveal a box that asks you to add a product. Select the Add Product link to move forward.

Click on the Add Photos button to insert product images that reveal what your product looks like. This works just like any other uploading interface where you can grab an image from your computer and upload it to the Facebook page. After you upload the photos you’ll need to select the Use Photos button to make them live.

A Product Details area shows up after you’ve included the photos. Once again, this all depends on the type of products you’re selling, so feel free to get creative and talk about what makes the product special. You can also simply copy the product description you use on your ecommerce shop.

If your item has different color or size options, or just about any other variant you could think of, click on the Edit Variants link to configure the variants offered through the product. In addition, you can also include shipping methods, pricing and other content like product categories.

Step 6: Managing Your Products

When you’ve uploaded a certain amount of products, you’ll see each of them placed in a list for you to click on and modify. From the list view, you can see an image of the product, pricing and whether or not the product is visible to the public.

If you have any questions about building your Facebook Shop, contact me.
I can build a Facebook Shop for you. Facebook Shops are free to set up my fee is for Online Time only.
I would also need your login details and of course your Product and Business Details to be able to add them. Once your Shop is set up you can either change your Passwords and/or carry on adding Products yourself.

If you have a Page outside the US, you can add one of the following two shop types: Message to Buy or Check Out on Another Website. The Check Out on Facebook shop type is only available for US pages at the moment.

With over a billion active users each month on Facebook, you may have heard that every company, whether you’re large or small, should consider getting on the social network bus.

“I don’t get it!” you might be saying. “How does posting silly pictures and telling people what I ate for lunch help grow my business? Besides, my time is already maxed out.”

True, Facebook is rife with silly status updates that can drive us crazy. But let’s look past all that and focus on the people behind the updates.

Who are these people? They’re existing and potential customers, and on Facebook, you can get up close and personal with them. They’re an important source for growing your business and probably the best advocates – as long as you stay in touch and keep them happy. After all, happy customers lead to referrals to new happy customers, right? Happiness all around – we like that!

Not convinced? Chew on this: Of all the major social network platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Foursquare, Facebook is by far the most popular based on sheer number of users. It gets 526 million+ who visit the site daily.

Still not sure if Facebook is right for your biz? How about five more reasons?

1. Strengthen customer relationships

With a business Facebook page, you can interact with prospects and customers in a way that they’re already familiar with. People share their likes, interests and activities on Facebook, and with your business page, you also can share news, photos and videos.

When someone checks you out on Facebook and “likes” your page or comments on a post, they’re showing that they want a relationship with your company. And they could potentially create great word-of mouth referrals to their friends. With all this “liking” and posting going around, you’ve got a ton of personal info to create targeted marketing campaigns (like promotions, deals and events) to groups of people based on specific interests that are relevant to your business.

For example: A person eating at a restaurant loves her meal. She posts to Facebook about how great it is and that message is exposed to her 200 friends via the news feed. That’s potentially 200 people that the restaurant just got in front of, without spending a single marketing dollar.

2. Expose your brand and increase awareness

While you’re making new connections and deepening existing relationships on Facebook, you’re also automatically generating awareness for your business free of charge. How’s that possible, you ask? Well, every user’s action on Facebook could be published to the news feed for the world to see. So anytime people “like” your page and/or any of your posts, this action could get published to hundreds, if not thousands, of their friends. So go out there and promote your great content, new product/service launches, special offers and events. Every post is an opportunity to get in front of tons of new peeps!

For example: That same restaurant customer posted to her 200 friends, and of the people who saw it, a few commented on the post with things like, “Great place!,” “I loved it too!” and “Their chicken wings are amazing!” It just happens that collectively all of those people had 5,000 friends who could be exposed to their comments. These actions could generate a ton of buzz, and still not a penny spent.

“I’m thinking about abandoning my website and just doing my Facebook page. It’s so easy plus I can add pictures, videos, and do just about everything else my website does. Why do I need a website? Do you think I could just go with Facebook?”

Has that thought ever crossed your Mind?

No, you can’t just do Facebook. Facebook is supplemental to your website. Here are 3 reasons why:

You have no control over Facebook. It’s a *free* service that they are providing for you to use *for free* at their pleasure and which could be changed, taken away, or any number of other nasty things at any given point. Without notice. You do not own your Facebook page.You should not put your complete online business presence in the hands of any entity you have NO control over. Really, there’s no need to add any other reasons to this list – this reason alone should be enough to convince you.

Your website brands you, your Facebook page brands Facebook. Your colors, your style, your logo – you can totally customize for your brand on your website. Facebook does allow some customized pages and images, but overall the site still looks like Facebook. Not you.Your website should be a mini representation of your in-store experience online. And you can’t really do that with Facebook.

People searching the web for your store or your products won’t easily find what they’re looking for on Facebook. What most visitors are looking for from your website is your telephone number, your store hours, your address, or your product mix.Yes, you can put all that on the info tab of your Facebook page. But it’s not in an easy to find, easy to see format on every page. If visitors have to search, they’ll just go somewhere easier.

What about Facebook’s limitations? Limitations!? Yes, even the 4th most powerful website in the world has limitations. And the limitations for Facebook don’t exist on your website where you can break apart you content into multiple, easy-to-use pieces in the way that promotes *your* brand. Facebook isn’t just a checkbox feature, nor is it a magic bullet. You don’t want to be a faceless brand – regular Facebook users are too savvy to spend time on a static, boring Facebook page. Your website will always compete with other websites for viewers, but on Facebook you’re competing within the same space.
To stand out you have to have an active presence that offers interesting, sharable information & an on-going conversation. Also, design-wise, you don’t have lots of room to play. Facebook limits the width of your Page content to just 520 pixels wide. That’s not very much.

So not only is the space in which you have to promote your content severely limited, Facebook controls it and can change it at any time. With your website, sure you need to optimize above-the-fold, but you can create a great user experience throughout that you completely control.

What about a Website’s limitations? Unless you’re using an existing template-based approach, custom well-designed websites take a specific set of skills & usually more than an afternoon of work. Creating a page on Facebook, by comparison, is super fast, easy, and anyone can do it. Using a Content Management System (CMS), like WordPress, will give anyone the ability to create and update their own website or blog, but it’s still not as easy as posting something to a Facebook page and participate in the ensuing conversation. And without promotion, even the best-designed website, optimized for search engines will float on the internet like an island unless you market it through ads or social media, etc.. Facebook, meanwhile, is built for sharing, and includes a built-in search feature.

So to summarize: In my Opinion a Facebook Page can be a useful Addition to your marketing strategy but could NEVER EVER replace a well thought about Website.

When prompted, click to allow permission to post to the selected Facebook page

Privacy notes:
To control who sees your Tweets, Retweets and username, go to yourFacebook Application settings and click Edit for the Twitter app to restrict who can see your Tweets and Retweets on your Facebook wall.
Unless you have explicitly chosen to authorize Twitter for Facebook to connect your Twitter account to your Facebook account, we will not cross-post to Facebook on your behalf, or display on Facebook your Twitter username, profile picture, or other profile information.
When you choose to connect your Twitter account to your Facebook account, the Facebook authentication dialog screen specifies the Facebook account information that you authorize sharing with Twitter.
This information allows us to cross-post between Twitter and Facebook and may help us improve your Twitter experience, for example, with better suggestions and content on Twitter.
If you disconnect your Facebook account from Twitter, we will delete the Facebook account information that you previously authorized. Please note that it may take up to a few weeks for this information to be fully removed from our systems.If your Tweets do not post: Make sure the box to Post your Tweets to Facebook is checked in your Twitter Apps settings.
Try disconnecting and reconnecting again. Still having trouble? Tweets not posting? Contact me to get it done!

Need Website Administrator?

Do you need somebody to look after your existing Website-update content, upload images, change colors once a week, or month or once off? I can take that time consuming task off you for a very reasonable fee.Contact me to discuss your needs.

By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information

The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.